I often get asked to provide a brief explanation about MIT Enigma — notably what it is, and why it is important particularly in the current age of P2P networking and blockchain technology. So here’s a brief summary.

The MIT Enigma system is part of a broader initiative at MIT Connections Science called the Open Algorithms for Equity, Accountability, Security, and Transparency (OPAL-EAST).

The MIT Enigma system employs two core cryptographic constructs simultaneously atop a Peer-to-Peer (P2P network of nodes). These are secrets-sharing (ala Shamir’s Linear Secret Sharing Scheme (LSSS)) and multiparty computation (MPC). Although secret sharing and MPC are topics of research for the past two decades, the innovation that MIT Enigma brings is the notion of employing these constructions on a P2P network of nodes (such as the blockchain) while providing “Proof-of-MPC” (like proof of work) that a node has correctly performed some computation.

In secret-sharing schemes, a given data item is “split” into a number of ciphertext pieces (called “shares”) that are then stored separately. When the data item needs to be reconstituted or reconstructed, a minimum or “threshold” number of shares need to be obtained and merged together again in a reverse cryptographic computation. For example, in Naval parlance this is akin to needing 2 out of 3 keys in order to perform some crucial task (e.g. activate the missile). Some secret sharing schemes possess the feature that some primitive arithmetic operations can be performed on shares (shares “added” to shares) yielding a result without the need to fully reconstitute the data items first. In effect, this feature allows operations to be performed on encrypted data (similar to homomorphic encryption schemes).

The MIT Enigma system proposes to use a P2P network of nodes to randomly store the relevant shares belonging to data items. In effect, the data owner no longer needs to keep a centralized database of data-items (e.g. health data) and instead would transform each data item into shares and disperse these on the P2P network of node. Only the data owner would know the locations of the shares, and can fetch these from the nodes as needed. Since each of these shares appear as garbled ciphertext to the nodes, the nodes are oblivious to their meaning or significance. A node in the P2P network would be remunerated for storage costs and the store/fetch operations.

The second cryptographic construct employed in MIT Enigma multiparty computation (MPC). The study of MPC schemes seeks to address the problem of a group of entities needing to share some common output (e.g. result of computation) whilst maintaining as secret their individual data items. For example, a group of patients may wish to collaboratively compute their average blood pressure information among them, but without each patient sharing actual raw data about their blood pressure information.

The MIT Enigma system combines the use of MPC schemes with secret-sharing schemes, effectively allowing some computations to be performed using the shares that are distributed on the P2P. The combination of these 3 computing paradigms (secret-sharing, MPC and P2P nodes) opens new possibilities in addressing the current urgent issues around data privacy and the growing liabilities on the part of organizations who store or work on large amounts of data.